


Death is the Worst

by werpiper



Category: Cats - Andrew Lloyd Webber, Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats - T. S. Eliot
Genre: Cats, Death, Gen, Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-15 20:34:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 631
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/werpiper/pseuds/werpiper
Summary: a Jellicle Cat story, in memoriam.This is horrible and sappy but I had to write it.





	Death is the Worst

_Jellicle cats are black and white..._

She was white, mostly, or at least some affiliated shade between moonlight and cream. Not a bit of her quite black, more a deep twilight grey. But she was _rather small_ as the poem suggests, and she knew _how to dance a gavotte and a jig_. She also had three names, as was proper for the kind: Maggie for everyday use, and Magistragrey more peculiar and more dignified. The last name will not be told here; it was hers to contemplate alone. 

For a cat, though, Maggie had very little use for aloneness. She had a taste of it in her youth, and it had not agreed with her. She much preferred company, and in particular, love. Not so much the love of other cats, who were often touchy on the subject, or emotionally fickle, or inclined to inappropriately sexualize the matter. Maggie preferred human beings. First she would evaluate their worthiness, which depended on reading their hearts. Most cats have the knack for this, but very few can be bothered to expend the effort -- it's easier to see who's allergic, or wearing something pleasantly textured on their lap. Maggie was not particular about textures, and didn't have an easy time triggering allergies, either. Besides which she liked hearts. Every one of them cast a light -- soft and welcoming, flickering and shy, laser-fierce -- and each one tempted her as much as the light of a laser racing across the floor.

Pouncing on a laser was a tragically empty end to a chase, but putting a cat's love upon a heart brought tangible and fascinating results. Most hearts brightened; some actually flared with warmth. A few would rouse from slow embers, if she treated them with patience, rubbing her cheek and closing her eyes. Many would touch her heart in return -- some cats denied this was possible, but Maggie attributed this to inexperience or ineptitude on their parts. It was a lovely feeling. Also she would usually be stroked and petted, and carried about, and offered delicious tidbits and ribbons to chase. It was a lovely life's work.

Like all life's works, Maggie's necessarily ended. The Heaviside layer is part of the atmosphere, a layer of ionized gas that reflects radio waves, allowing them to be propagated around the earth's horizon. It is also the place to which a cat's soul ascends upon its last breath ( _if Old Deuteronomy so chooses_ , as the old songs tell). Many cats consider themselves lucky to reach it and stay there, above the clouds and the Russell Hotel, where they can lie in the sunlight and the stars and listen to the radio if they like. Many others pass through and go on through the depths of space, where distant stars shine and swing as tempting as laser points, and many allow themselves to be reflected back to the world they came from, to find a new life and a new life's work.

But Maggie took her last breath in loving arms, a scant inch from a loving heart, that loved her (and, she'd noticed, nearly her alone) almost as well as she herself loved almost everyone. So when she reached the Heaviside, she turned around at once -- for her work did not feel finished; how could love ever be? She fell back into that other's heart, between her own last exhalation and the next breath the other took in. Hers was still a cat's soul, but she felt entirely at home in the light of a human chest. She stretched out there, seeing its light now from a new perspective, and made herself comfortable. She did love her work, and there was plenty more to do.

_“Sometimes things become possible if we want them bad enough.”_  
― T.S. Eliot

**Author's Note:**

> Death really is the worst. If the story makes it seem otherwise, well, isn't that what stories are for?


End file.
